Yahoo Groups

A new novel by Michelle Moran explores the lives of the children of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, and is reviewed in the Boston Globe:

Twins Kleopatra Selene and Alexander
Helios are brought to Rome in chains, still mourning the deaths of
their parents and their younger brother, Ptolemy. Though paraded
through the streets as part of Caesar’s Triumph, they are still
considered Egyptian royalty and not officially enslaved, but their
futures are uncertain, and they are subject to the whims of a coldly
calculating Caesar and his vindictive wife, Livia. The twins grow up
surrounded by secrecy and danger, witnesses to the brutality of Rome as
seen from within a gilded cage of Caesar’s inner circle.

They
find an unlikely protector in their new guardian, Octavia, sister of
Caesar and the wife whom their father, Marc Anthony, abandoned in Rome
in order to be with Cleopatra in Egypt. But even from the relative
safety of her home, they discover that life in “the greatest city on
earth’’ is shockingly grim compared with the one they left behind.
“Even Thebes, which had suffered destruction at the hands of Ptolemy
IX, was far more beautiful than this,’’ Selene thinks as she views Rome
for the first time. “There was no organization, no city plan, and
though buildings of rare beauty stood out among the brink tabernae and
bathhouses, they were like gems in a quarry of jagged stone.’’

In
Rome, slaves are maimed or crucified by the hundreds if a single one
rebels; assassinations are common; newborns are left out in the cold to
die; and women have little value, forced to send away their daughters
and remarry if Caesar commands it. “When a girl is born, a period of
mourning is begun. She is invisa [unseen], unwanted, valueless. She has
no rights but what her father gives her,’’ the slave Gallia, a captured
Gaelic princess, tells Selene, who quickly understands that the only
way to save her life is to somehow become useful to Caesar.

Moran
skillfully weaves into her latest book plenty of political history and
detail without ever weighing down the story, which is fast-paced,
intriguing, and beautifully written; a subplot about a mysterious “Red
Eagle’’ who is trying to incite a slave rebellion is riveting. In
“Cleopatra’s Daughter,’’ she once again demonstrates her talent for
taking long-forgotten historical figures and bringing them vividly to
life.

A FEW years ago we came up with the term “Chimerica” to describe the
combination of the Chinese and American economies, which together had
become the key driver of the global economy. With a combined 13 percent
of the world’s land surface and around a quarter of its population,
Chimerica nevertheless accounted for a third of global economic output
and two-fifths of worldwide growth from 1998 to 2007.

We called it Chimerica for a reason: we believed this relationship was
a chimera — a monstrous hybrid like the part-lion, part-goat,
part-snake of legend. Now we may be witnessing the death throes of the
monster. The question President Obama must consider as he flies to Asia
this week is whether to slay it or to try to keep it alive.

The cartoon art accompanying the column, however, seems to be a hybrid of King Kong and Polyphemus, not lion, goat and snake...But of course the scientific use of the term Chimera is also attested; in fact it's in yesterday's Times:

A geep is not actually an offspring of the sexual mating of one sheep and one
goat; rather, it is an animal resulting from the physical mingling of
very early embryos of the two species and thus has four parents — two
sheep and two goats. The scientific term for an animal with mingled
cells from two species is chimera.

If history is a guide, then the recent suicide bombings in Baghdad show that the insurgency in Iraq is far from over.

Contrary to much of what is written and said, victory is not near and
the notion that the “surge” of troops was some great, decisive military
action that set the stage for political reconciliation is a chimera.

It was a chimera for the French in Algeria that their bloody counterinsurgency there defeated Algerian nationalists.

After the war, which lasted from 1954 to 1962, a myth started to build
in the French Army and then found its way into American Army thinking,
where it lives on today, that the French military operations defeated
the insurgents.

Not true. In fact, the Algerian insurgents chose
to lay low while the French Army and people impaled themselves on the
political problems of colonial rule. In the end, President Charles de
Gaulle ordered the French Army out of Algeria in 1961 and Algeria got
its independence.

Wow...imaginary monsters, coupled with references to myth and self-impalement! That's why they call it the paper of record.

Final question: Which of these meanings was the "Chimera Investment Corporation" thinking of? One hopes it's not a place where, with Jonathan Swift, one might say, "Rise by merit to promotion; Alas! a mere chimeric notion." [Thanks to OED for that one.]

An "ambitiously weighty" novel, Sunset Oasis, set in late-19th-cen. Egypt, by Bahaa Taher, pairs a "middle-aged government official" with his Irish, Classically trained wife, on a journey to the Oasis of Siwa--yes, that Siwa:

Even Alexander the Great, who makes a surprise appearance as a
narrator, remembers his dream "of filling the world with a new strain,
from the loins of the Europeans and the Asians, after which there could
be no ill will among them or wars" with a sense of defeat.

Sunset Oasis
is an ambitiously weighty novel and its characters sometimes behave
more like ciphers than real people: "I am not Sappho!" exclaims
Catherine, true to her education, when Maleeka tries to embrace her. As
if in sympathy, the translation, by the usually excellent Humphrey
Davies, is occasionally ponderous. But it offers a welcome glimpse of a
troubled period of Egypt's history largely forgotten by its British
colonisers and an absorbing portrait of a would-be good man destroyed
by bad times.

In a column in the Beacon-News, a lieutenant in the Aurora (IL) police department makes a surprising allusion to an Archaic Greek lyric poet:

Officers train in the academy so that every day we can handle these
dangerous situations while on the job. Our departmental training is
rigorous and strenuous because in police training we understand the
words of the Greek soldier Archilochus: "We do not rise to the level of
expectations. We fall to the level of our training."

Hmm...could be a nice elegiac couplet, right? Now, I'm sure Archilochus was a great martial artist (devotee in equal measure of Enyalios and the Muses!), but he was no Bruce Lee...